Friday Open Thread (with pandemic, 4)

Dear friends,

It’s Day 15 of our return-to-Canada quarantine. Today sees Stu and me free to leave the flat for essentials, but I’m in no hurry to, even though there are groceries to do and some diffuse grey sunlight to invite into my skin. The news sits heavily with me. There are checkpoints between Ottawa and Gatineau, and therefore checkpoints between my family and me, and I’m finding that very hard to live with and process, even if materially it doesn’t make much of a difference. I can’t bear any more borders.

I don’t want every weekly thread to be about different facets of pandemic life, but I’m finding it very helpful to have these check-ins with you all at a regular interval, as time is increasingly wobbly. I’d love to know your feelings about it — would you prefer to talk about other things, or have some shared venting/cheering space here?

For this week, I wanted to ask — what previously mundane taken-for-granted thing feels enchanted and wondrous in the wake of our isolations?

For me, it’s laundry. A drudge, a chore, a bore heretofore. Now the idea of putting things in a machine to make them clean with no effort on my part is just magic from the beforetimes. There are laundry facilities in my building but we haven’t wanted to venture down to them, have been handwashing necessaries as best we can.

Love to you all,

Amal